Authors: Pamela Foland
Angela looked ready to split a seam instead she let out a large guffaw which deteriorated quickly into a manic giggling. Annette felt herself released by the telekinetic hand and quickly slumped to the floor of the room. Now that the niceties were over she was free to glance around at the room’s bizarre decor. Floor, ceiling, and walls were covered in layer upon layer of haphazardly applied paint, some splattered, some sponged, some brushed some rolled, in an entire rainbow of colors.
It was a sight to be seen, half mess, half art, it spoke of total manic frustration. It said Angela.
“Nice paint job Chief!” Annette said.
Angela turned her attention back to Annette, “How many more- what did you call them- sluggoids, do you think there are?”
Annette shrugged, Prima piped up, “Central’s projections given all of its data suggest no more than another twenty to thirty, with a possible error of eight percent, unless they have made too large an insurgence into the civilian population. Central informs me that the entire group from the restaurant has been collected.”
Angela raised an eyebrow, “Central computer has been acting on its own?”
Prima’s remote produced a brief mechanical squelch, “No, it is acting as per Annette’s plan of containment.”
Angela looked hard at Annette, “So she’s the authorizing factor in this?”
Prima squelched again, “We are aware that she isn’t officially a factor, but under the circumstances it wasn’t entirely inappropriate, after all she has been acting as a member of your staff for quite some time now, and as far as could be demonstrated she was the only factor-ish person taking any kind of stand and. . .”
“Enough, I have a
real problem. I can’t have a second year trainee going around and saving Sanctuary, it doesn’t look right,” Angela’s face was flat and emotionless, then as if in response to Annette’s sudden fear it changed to a broad grin,
“No one is in trouble, not for keeping a cool head in an emergency and working out a plan that actually works. I just will have to remedy the situation.” A prime jacket appeared in Angela’s arms. She held it out to Annette, the offer of the coat was tantamount to appointment as a prime.
“Go on take it!” Prima said, “It’s what you’ve wanted!”
Annette’s eyes bulged; she hadn’t finished training. How could she be a prime? She shook her head no and held up her hands. Today was only her fifteenth birthday.
“Just take it!” Angela said with a grimace, “You still could probably use more training, but I can’t see why you don’t deserve it, after all you’ve taken on a lot of responsibility, and have gone a long way towards saving Sanctuary today. Not to mention what you’ve already done. There are factors who haven’t accomplished half as much as you with fifteen years in the field. Take it.”
“I’ve got it, an antiserum that should work!” Tina blurted, oblivious to the other goings on in the room. As she looked up from her pad she blinked twice at the prime jacket still folded in Angela’s arms. “Oh, my.”
“Good, Tina, would you slap the girl and get her to take the damn jacket so we can get on with the round up!” Angela grunted. Tina took the jacket from Angela and wrapped it around Annette’s shoulders where she sat, still stunned.
“Perhaps Cousin, you should finish the round up, Annette looks pretty rounded out. Plus I may need her to perfect the serum, it’s based on her immune system and all.”
“Okay,” Angela replied, clearly reluctant.
Annette fished out bags of tags and handed them to Angela, “Slap these on the infected people and Central computer will transport them to the stasis room. Nice and simple.”
Angela headed for the door then stopped and trotted back to Annette, “When this is over I want you to pull a design team together. Between the quake damage, Kavir and the increasing inflow of refugees, we need some new facilities. You and your select team are going to design them. Take whomever you want or need from wherever you need them, design us a new place of refuge. Then build it. I’ll have Sinclair draw up specifications for you, and give you an information package on what your resources are.”
Annette’s mood slumped, old wounds to her confidence still existed when it came to Sinclair Chavez. She quickly hid it with a weak smile, “So, when do you want it by?”.
“It’ll all be in the information package. Frankly once it’s set, the deadline will be quite inflexible. I do want to make one thing clear to you, and I’ll make it clear to Chavez as well. You will be in charge of this project, he and all of his resources are at your disposal. For all intents and purposes your authority will be second only to my own, making you his boss.” A smile flickered across Angela’s face before she turned again and left.
Annette sat stunned with the prime jacket wrapped around her shoulders. Annette tentatively clutched the jacket in place. A prime? At fifteen?
Not even Angela had mentioned the possibility before.
“Are you going to be alright?” Tina asked, her face full of concern.
Annette blinked at Tina, “Am I really a prime now?”
Tina smiled, “Apparently!” Annette shivered, coughed and spat up more slime. Tina took this with alarm. She quickly scanned both Annette and the small puddle of slime she had ejected. “Yes, it will definitely work.”
Annette numbly
slipped her arms into the sleeves of her new jacket, “I am so relieved. What about me, am I going to cough up black sludge for the rest of my life or is there an end to this?”
Tina tapped her pad, “That seems to be the last of it.”
“Oh, good, can I pass out now?” Annette asked feeling her consciousness drifting.
“No, but a little sedation may be in order,” Tina smiled and pulled out a omnijector and held it to Annette’s neck, there was a hiss and a prick, followed by a fuzzy-warm sense of well-being.
Annette tried to worry as consciousness left her but she was so tired to begin with that she couldn’t resist.
- - - - - - - - - -
Chapter 16
Hitting the wall
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Breaking waves and the sound of blood pounding in Yllera’s ears woke her. Foreign smells kept her conscious; sea-salt and iodine, fish and seaweed, overpowered by a familiarly frightening
male scent. Yllera sat up quickly, a little too quickly for someone recovering from a stun capsule. She was in a dimly lit coral cave, dressed in a flimsy dress resembling dried seaweed.
The bed beneath her was a make shift creation of rope driftwood and a grass filled pad. She searched for Max but he was nowhere to be seen. The light in the cave came from the one entrance, covered by the same flimsy fabric as her dress. By the rippling pattern the light, Yllera judged that at some point it reflected off of water.
A mono-tonal hum echoed into the room from the hall and Yllera backed herself away from the entrance as far as she could. She was practically trying to become a part of the fossilized coral of the rear wall. The whistle stopped and a hand shoved open the drape.
“You are awake my love,” Kavir said holding a tray of fire roasted sea-life before him.
“Let me go!” Yllera shrieked.
Kavir put the tray on the bed and reached for Yllera. She shrugged away from him but could not evade his touch. Warmth and tingling anticipation spread from where his slime covered hand left a trail on her arm. Her sudden scream announced her terror. Kavir’s mind pressed at her from without and to a strange extent from within. Yllera shivered. He pushed his way past every one of her shields, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to stop him.
There was intimacy there, more than she had experienced ever before. They had been one organism, now they were two. Yllera knew from deep within, that Kavir considered it only right and proper for them to become one once again. All of his influence, telepathic and expertly physical, was poured into convincing her of that truth.
“Do not resist,” He whispered huskily, crawling onto the bed to join her. He planted his lips on hers, and she limply kissed back.
She pulled herself away from him in shock for her betrayal of her feelings for Max, “No!”
“What does no mean?” Kavir wondered telepathically deep within Yllera.
His lips pressed on hers and his slippery black mucous filled her mouth.
It flowed against gravity into her synapses changing hours to eternity and eternity to moments. Time in an ecstasy Yllera did not, could not choose to resist. Her consciousness blended with his and she knew her body did as well. He left her still caught in his thrall and he fed her, sometimes despite herself, though she had long since lost the desire to resist.
It wasn’t until a rhythmic pain took hold of her that she came into herself again. Then it was to the horror of eight
black slimy sacks passing from her womb. Kavir gently lowered each into a tub of seawater as
they moved and flexed from some form within.
Struck suddenly with the horror of what Kavir had done to her, Yllera once again screamed. The pain came again harder and faster. Yllera struggled for breath around the pain. Muscles stretched; bones ground; flesh tore, and out came an actual child. Kavir seemed confused by it. Yllera was enthralled it was a perfect little copy of herself.
The pain remained acute and Yllera could feel herself bleeding, perhaps a little too freely. Her heart beat pounded in her ears again and she felt herself blacking out. Ba-dump, she needed. . . ba-dump. . .Kavir had no concept of how to stop the blood. She needed help!
- - - - - - - - - -
Annette awoke, like any other morning, too aware of her responsibilities. Her prime jacket hung from its hook on the wall next to the door into the hall. She showered and dressed quickly in one of her blue jumpsuits, though the rest of her training group had moved on to fourth-year green, and she was technically beyond training entirely.
A lot had been accomplished in the slightly over two years since Angela gave Annette the order to design and build a new place of refuge. The last year and a half had passed her by too quickly for her to notice. In that time many things had happened.
For one Annette had moved into a clear place of leadership among her floor mates. They still called Carl “Captain,” but Annette’s old nickname of “Quick” had fallen away, replaced, jokingly, by “Chief Jr.”
By now it had taken on a more serious tone, some of the adults who helped with the Refuge project had begun using it as well.
Annette had tapped the resources of her floor mates first and foremost. Mike and Tamar
did the mathematics necessary to the project. Scope and Popper had worked on the aesthetics. Net organized all the information and Carl helped Annette with the allocation of time and resources. All of them except Annette received credit in their training for their work with Annette, but in the end they returned to the simplicity of their classes when not occupied with the project. For Annette it was a full time job, but it wasn’t her only responsibility.
Annette glanced at the time stamp on her media screen and raced to help Tawny with the pre-trainees.
Then she bolted down breakfast and rushed to the room she had appropriated for the design team. It was a large room full of workstations and design computers. Printouts filled the walls, showing the various stages and levels of the new design.
The room was empty of people, they were still in class or busy with other duties.
Annette called up a holographic projection of Refuge, the de-facto name of their future home.
She walked through it stepping closer to the image of the main cavern, designed to act as a pocket world,
With a pie shaped footprint, each slice of the pie
would be a mile high and more than two
hundred wide. The main cavern was designed to simulate a temperate climate. It even had a small sea, and that was just one of five major caverns.
Each of the other four simulated a different environment, from Jelarian desert to glacial tundra. Rivers flowed through the land and tunnels connected the seas. It was beautiful and would have one thing Annette hadn’t seen since she was a very young child, weather. Annette sighed standing at eye level with the central city of refuge named Grand central, because it was the central point around which the pie shaped environmental caverns would be arranged.
Another city, one more civilian oriented was offset into the main cavern just a few miles had the name of Hub. None of the design team had been much more than practical about the names they gave the towns and cities.